by cconcepts on 4/10/22, 9:27 AM with 274 comments
Then this week I was working through a new project on a customer's site taking notes in Evernote as I normally do. I spent a good chunk of time going through the project onsite and making a comprehensive list of everything that would need to be done. I noticed the header on my note was grey but assumed it was a UI change. I had 4G reception on my phone and figured, even if something's not quite right I can sync it up back at the office like I normally do as the note would be on my phone. So I proceeded like normal.
The whole note is gone as if it never existed.
Is this some sort of effort to onboard me to the paid version? Have I inadvertently clicked a "yes I accept that the free version is going to become unreliable" button?
I appreciate I am not a great customer - I have been using a free version for years without even thinking about it. But thats kind of the point, Evernote worked so well I never gave it a second thought.
Now I am not 100% sure on the safety of my notes...
What is other people's experience? Have I just been caught napping because I mindlessly clicked an updated terms of use without reading it (as I do)?
If I go paid am I getting something as good as what the old Evernote was like?
by DangerousPie on 4/10/22, 10:18 AM
These days they have added all these extra features which I don't need, and which have made the whole app slow and terribly clunky. When I use the iPad app it takes several seconds to load notes or search, and the UI keeps jumping around if it hasn't loaded completely yet. Terrible experience.
The icing on the cake is that they changed the welcome page of the app to no longer show the list of notes - and if you want to edit the page to get that list back, you have to sign up to their premium subscription! And I'm already paying too, just not for the right level of subscription apparently.
I have been meaning to find an alternative for months now, so if anyone has any suggestions please do let me know! The most important features to me are note syncing across iOS/Mac/Windows and the ability to import my notes from Evernote.
by dotBen on 4/10/22, 4:45 PM
OneNote is essentially free, it's Microsoft's gateway to get people to come back into their ecosystem and you obviously know it's going to be well maintained, high integrity of storage, etc. I know it will be still around and maintained in 10 years time when I still want to access my old notes.
The mobile and iPad apps are nice, there's also a convenient Evernote to OneNote importer: https://www.onenote.com/import-evernote-to-onenote
My take on Evernote is that they never managed to properly monetize it. I was a single user, not in a team, didn't need shared notes or chat functionality and there was no need for me to pay for it... until they decided to arbitrarily limit the number of devices you could use your account on which is just such a shitty approach because we all know there's no actual cost to servicing three devices vs two. In other words the only thing they could do to get me to pay for it was hobble my UX until I coughed up. Sorry, no thanks.
Honestly, if you just want a solid 1:1 Evernote replacement that isn't markdown, self-hosted, etc just use MS OneNote. It's great.
by klausjensen on 4/10/22, 10:10 AM
During those years, Evernote has kept getting worse and worse, becomeing slower and more unreliable at doing cores things, while they slap features on it, that I do not want (collaboration, chat and other garbage).
I want to migrate off at some point, but 10 years of scanned documents are tricky to migrate, and frankly I do not know of any good alternatives at this point.
by happytoexplain on 4/10/22, 2:10 PM
I also noticed one day that some of my notes that only had titles also had a body containing the same text. I backspaced through the superfluous body, and the note deleted itself. I reproduced this reliably. I think maybe those notes really only had bodies, but Evernote was duplicating the body text in the title textbox, or vice versa, tricking me into thinking it had both, so when I deleted the body, it considered the whole note empty. Luckily, I noticed what was happening before I could no longer remember which notes I had accidentally deleted.
Other than the big bugs:
Pasting without formatting never seems to work.
Assigning a note to a notebook and tagging it is not keyboard-friendly, reducing efficiency dramatically.
Filtering by notebook/tag takes way more clicks and screens than it needs to on mobile.
Launching the app is incredibly slow, which means you can't use it for a quick look-up.
The conflict rules seem overly simple, as I frequently get conflicts in a big note I have when I simply add a line anywhere in it on two devices.
by nfriedly on 4/10/22, 10:30 AM
I'm running it on an unRAID server with nightly backups, but you could just as easily run it from a raspberry pi.
Before next cloud, I was using text files in Dropbox.
My employer just started using notion. It seems fine so far, but I don't see myself switching away from next cloud any time soon.
by michelb on 4/10/22, 10:40 AM
by olivermarks on 4/10/22, 10:10 AM
It's a terrific product but I no longer trust it for anything important. I also find the search is increasingly janky which is now a major problem. This is all a shame because it is still best of class to me
by tlb on 4/10/22, 3:32 PM
I switched to Joplin and I like it a lot. It's very fast. It uses markdown syntax with all the features like LaTeX equations. It stores your notes as regular files in the file system so you can export or grep or whatever. Syncing to the mobile app works OK.
by kmarc on 4/10/22, 10:13 AM
Until then, on Evernote's Tos [1] scroll down to "What Else Do I Need to Know?" and read point f) of section "YOU EXPRESSLY UNDERSTAND AND AGREE That".
In summary, it says they are not in any way reaponsible for your data loss. Reading in-between the lines, it basically says, they will have outages, disruptions, or buggy updates and your responsibility is to defend yourself against these events.
[1]: https://evernote.com/legal/terms-of-service
I think you already assumed all these. I only elaborated on it because I saw this many times, even (especially?) with the largest providers like Gmail, AWS etc. And this will continue happening.
I understand (and a bit scared for) that most of the people don't even know how unsafe their data is, however, on HN I would expect everyone is (paranoid enough to) back up their data.
I hope you can recover your notes, and regardless of your success in doing so, please spend an afternoon looking up ToS's of the services you use.
(disclaimer: I worked a bit in the backup sw industry, and yes I have multiple full offline copies of my emails and notes for the past 20+y)
by lazzurs on 4/10/22, 10:14 AM
The sync works with a bunch of different cloud services and I’ve yet to have a problem with it.
by spondyl on 4/10/22, 11:05 AM
You can read about this era in detail here: https://nira.com/evernote-history/
As we come towards the third quarter of the 2010s, Evernote was being shaped up a bit in terms of non-core products being dropped, on-prem infrastructure being migrated to the cloud and so on but this wasn't without great pains as well.
Not to mention, a non-trivial number of staff appear to have left during that period too which creates a negative feedback loop where the upper tier of potential candidates may be dismissive of an employer like Evernote (if it looks questionable on your CV) which is arguably the type of talent you might need in a period like this where your competitors have true realtime collaborative elements that the market is expecting from you as well as table stakes.
Now after this period, and this is just from my own observations so I don't have any particular stories to link, Ian Small tool over as CEO with a personal focus on continuing to modernise Evernote.
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4I5cq2DfrSpehLO_71NC...
I can't say how that has been received but I have a lot of respect for the "Behind the Scenes" series that occurred, showing Evernote's technical investments such as:
* Sharding their databases
* Standardising feature sets across mobile. Android might have had features for years that aren't on iOS and vice versa
* Standardising their applications hence the move to Electron. In the context of them needing to move faster, it makes sense to focus on one codebase instead of five, regardless of how you might feel about Electron itself.
While I don't know that Evernote can ever catch up, I have to say I have a lot of kudos for the risk that Ian took in showing us what they're struggling with.
That said, I don't use Evernote so I can't exactly say I feel the pain of their customer base but as far as content that might attract new talent, I think transparency like that is pretty much the gold standard next to having a technical blog and so on.
by smcleod on 4/10/22, 10:30 AM
by thesimp on 4/10/22, 10:17 AM
Then again there are some very irritating things in the new Evernote 10.x versions of which I am constantly thinking: "are they using this feature themselves or am I the only one?".
For example:
* try to move a note to a different notebook. You would thing that the obvious thing to do would be to click on the current notebook name that is shown above the note and then it drops down a list. But no.... You have to hover over the current notebook name, then a _hidden_ button becomes visible, that you have to click and then you can move the note.
* copy&pasting you tube links always shows a videoclip preview. I never want that, I copy and paste a link because I want to save a link thank you very much.
*search through a stack of notebooks still does not work. You can only search through one notebook at a time or through every note.
by mark_l_watson on 4/10/22, 3:58 PM
Since then I have switched around using Google Keep, Apple Notes, and FastMail Notes for quick and dirty notes on things to do or things to maybe look at in the future.
I consider myself to be a gentleman scientist, I am deeply interested in a small number of technologies. What I most enjoy doing now is organizing things I learn or little code experiments in online books that are easy to update, and eventually retire when I don’t want to maintain them or they no longer seem relevant. Sort of like blogging with more structure.
Sorry for being so off topic here, but it seems too easy to get into long term habits and not occasionally decide what is really worth spending time on. My carefully curated Evernote notes were a waste of time.
by Barrin92 on 4/10/22, 3:30 PM
by smugma on 4/10/22, 2:59 PM
I now use the iOS Notes app. It’s good enough, including the sharing feature.
by elcapitan on 4/10/22, 12:42 PM
by mkl95 on 4/10/22, 10:14 AM
by Mikeb85 on 4/10/22, 4:01 PM
Tried Evernote back in the day and MS OneNote. Google does cloud sync so much better than anyone else though, even if it has less features.
by nitin-pai on 4/10/22, 12:26 PM
I switched to Obsidian and am very happy. Obsidian Sync and Obsidian Publish are value for money; and Obsidian+Syncthing is a great option for backing up the notes in a local machine.
by opan on 4/10/22, 12:31 PM
Syncthing + your text editor of choice (vim in termux on android is actually pretty good, imo) is a reliable bet. Emacs with org-mode could be used in a similar way. I'm sure there are other combinations as well.
by fredgrott on 4/10/22, 10:28 AM
by didip on 4/10/22, 2:27 PM
It is just a note taking tool, something that can easily be done with a git repo hosted on github.
by simne on 4/10/22, 7:00 PM
To be honest, I cannot say anything about e-note client quality, I have not used it at all (I try to use opensource self-hosting alternatives), but such solutions on backend side, look very odd for me, and not look trustworthy.
Returning to your case, at adequate services, should be possibility to backup your documents yourself, or service should have incremental backups.
So, in such circumstances I will first figure out, if it is possible to make backup myself (and will do backup; and will plan backup frequency based on value of day work for me - for most valued - daily or even few times per day; for less valued - weekly). If self backup impossible, I will ask tech support to return to previous state on server side.
For alternatives, as I know, e-note is best for its cost per client, I think anything else will be more expensive (unfortunately, self hosted FOSS solutions are more expensive, even considering, I trust them much more).
by j45 on 4/10/22, 5:17 PM
OneNote is nice except it lacks offline support.
Notion is even better with great collaboration but one fatal flaw, no real offline mode.
Evernote was always instant on and with you for the most part, except where it started losing notes on me.
by seanhunter on 4/10/22, 12:46 PM
Evernote just keeps getting worse. They add things with negative utility (like the annoying new "home" screen that you have to click past to get to your actual notes while basic features like "search", and the app's speed are significantly worse than they were a few years back.
by adamddev1 on 4/10/22, 12:22 PM
Edit: I just found iA Writer. It works great!
by sandgiant on 4/10/22, 5:03 PM
by erikpukinskis on 4/10/22, 8:17 PM
For me Evernote fails the “you had one job!” test.
SimpleNote has been great to me. You can tell they’re not going to mess with the core recipe either.
by bsutt on 4/10/22, 11:02 AM
by bprasanna on 4/10/22, 10:44 AM
by srvmshr on 4/10/22, 9:56 AM
Seriously, it feels so much better IMHO, with atomic rollback and you can export your data out in a non-proprietary format (MD, HTML, PDF) if it comes to difficult choices someday.
by goopthink on 4/10/22, 3:39 PM
by ergonaught on 4/10/22, 4:04 PM
“What happened to them” is covered in other comments (same thing that’s happened to everything that isn’t dominated by a benevolent vision-possessing dictator of sorts to keep things focused and say no a lot).
by stblack on 4/10/22, 4:17 PM
https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052560314-Ins... (Windows/Mac)
I've archived this install package in case the URL dies.
Edit: This is version 7.14.1
by kactus on 4/10/22, 5:11 PM
These days I just use Apple Notes and it’s been flawless.
Notion looks neat but I’m wary of startups now. I’d probably use SimpleNote if I switched.
I also have a bunch of scattered markdown notes everywhere, wouldn’t be too hard for me to just sync a folder and use something like Typora to make adding images easier.
by stevage on 4/10/22, 11:16 PM
These days I use VSCode Notes, a pretty minimal extension that suits the way I work.
by gentlesoulcarp on 4/10/22, 9:50 PM
Don't take VC money for knowledge-base companies. You need thoughtful development for these types of applications and a commitment to the very long term, which is incompatible with VC. Obsidian has fallen into this same trap.
by kodah on 4/10/22, 5:08 PM
by glmeece on 4/11/22, 3:53 PM
by masterofmisc on 4/10/22, 7:40 PM
by 627467 on 4/10/22, 6:23 PM
by fluder on 4/10/22, 10:23 AM
by eternityforest on 4/10/22, 9:13 PM
It's the first time I've actually been happy with a notes app. I wish it were open, and there's a few features I wish it had, but it's the best setup I have ever used.
by pedro2 on 4/10/22, 5:17 PM
* Linux support (closed beta)
* tags! omg, I hate and love tags!
If you wish to hop on Microsoft land, Microsoft Todo and Onenote seems an adequate combo.
NOTE: blocking ads somehow blocked Onenote. Not sure which config I used, only that it was DNS, and wasn't able to replicate.
by ilamont on 4/10/22, 3:18 PM
IIRC the original developer offered to buy it back from Microsoft but Microsoft refused.
by singularity2001 on 4/10/22, 1:16 PM
by tronicdude on 4/10/22, 5:29 PM
by muhehe on 4/10/22, 6:17 PM
by nfcampos on 4/10/22, 9:42 PM
Always open on 1/3 of my screen.
by bgribble on 4/10/22, 11:05 AM
by mario_kart_snes on 4/10/22, 2:22 PM
by wly_cdgr on 4/10/22, 1:02 PM
But also, if you want a good product to stay good, pay for it
by Brajeshwar on 4/10/22, 3:57 PM
---
Let’s say you were just hired as the President of a furniture company. The owner says he knows it’s good furniture but even despite huge investments they can’t seem to sell any furniture. Your job is to turn things around.
You start on the factory floor. The furniture is made by a combination of machines and human workers. Some people are employed to set up and configure the machines to make furniture parts. Around 150 people work on actually making furniture, either assembling it, doing quality tests, or setting up and operating the automated machinery. Things aren’t perfect, but you aren’t going to make any changes on your first day so you make some notes and move on.
The furniture hasn’t changed much over the years, it is still basically the same as it was when the furniture store opened. The furniture gets ‘improved’ from time to time, you see a step stool with an alarm clock, a small safe, and a web-cam built into it, but when you ask the foreman he tells you nobody has ever turned on the alarm clock or used the safe or connected the web-cam on any of the step stools. People seem to mainly use the stools so they can reach things that are up high.
There is a problem where sometimes people slip when the stools are wet, so they worked out how to add a nonslip pad, but the product managers have decided that the next feature will be to add scents to the stools, so you can buy a stool that smells like cinnamon or one that smells like apples. They have a big advertising campaign already paid for and they already sent out the press release announcing “ScentedStools”, so the machines need to be set up to start stamping out stools that smell like “Fresh Linen” by the end of the week. There are daily status meetings to update them on the progress. If the “Fresh Linen” stools aren’t being produced by Thursday they are going to start having two status meetings per day.
You hear it’s someone named Jim’s last day, so you set up an exit interview. Jim tells you that the bosses and people upstairs don’t really know what is going on in the factory. Most days he just sits and reads the news, his “nontechnical” manager doesn’t know anything about furniture or how Jim does his job so there’s no way for the manager to know what is going on other than to ask Jim. Supervision primarily consists of making sure Jim is sitting at his desk and looking at his monitor.
Since it is not a Startup thing to set Jim’s specific hours for him to be at work, his manager has started scheduling 9AM meetings every day to force people to turn up. Every week or so Jim has to update some Product Managers upstairs about what is going on, and he just says they are making steady progress and comes up with some specific problem to explain why they aren’t done, pretty much anything with jargon will work since nobody upstairs “could tell white oak from red oak”. It takes about 5 minutes to give his status update but he’s expected to stay for the entire 1 hour meeting, so he brings his laptop so he can read that FurnitureNews website. He says he is quitting to take a much lower paying job because he is bored and doesn’t respect his manager.
Next you go upstairs to the office space and find 300 people having meetings with each other about annual plans and prioritization, writing mission statements and meeting to discuss mission statements. The 300 people upstairs are constantly in motion and complaining about how over worked they are. They each have 5, 6 or even 7 (sometimes more!) 1-hour meetings every day, but you only see them meet with each other, nobody has any meetings with anyone from outside the company, nobody has meetings with possible customers, and only very rarely do you see anyone from the factory floor in these meetings, and then it is almost always just to give a status update. None of these folks really understand furniture very well, they can’t really tell good furniture from bad furniture, they literally don’t know the difference between solid oak and cardboard, they don’t know how long it takes or how much money it costs to build a chair. After a few days of meetings you haven’t met anyone who cares about furniture at all, they all seem to want to work at the furniture factory because it pays well, or they like the prestige of being ‘in furniture’. Mostly they talk about how overworked they are and make the case for hiring a few more people. If they could hire another person for their team they wouldn’t be so far behind. You aren’t sure what they are getting behind in, are they talking about meetings they can’t attend because it conflicts with another meeting that is more important somehow? Do they need more time to work on power point slides for the next days meetings? Some of the office folks have degrees in furniture science, but none of them have ever successfully built or designed any furniture outside of little school projects.
Then you go out behind the factory and see a massive mountain of furniture stacked up to the sky. The factory workers have been building furniture every day for years. People all agree that it is good furniture, maybe the best there is. Nobody ever buys any of it. It’s not sold in any stores. No hotels buy it. No businesses buy it. Lots of people are lined up as far as you can see to pick furniture out of the pile for free.
How do you fix this company?
by fortran77 on 4/10/22, 3:49 PM
by hwers on 4/10/22, 10:02 AM
by unixhero on 4/10/22, 10:45 PM
by arapacana on 4/10/22, 11:32 AM
My entire information management pipeline has been overhauled: I know Notion can be a little culty, but it genuinely has improved my performance so drastically I think it is the best thing to happen to me since the internet itself.